


Send You All My Love

by Brumeier



Series: Bite Sized Fic 2018 [46]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5+1 Things, Friendship, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Postcards, Prompt Fill, Recovered Memories, Reunions, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 05:47:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15623895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: LJ Comment Fic for Letters prompt:Author's Choice, any character(s), receiving a postcard from a long-lost friend/lover/family memberFive times Bucky sent Steve a postcard, and one time he hand-delivered it.





	Send You All My Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SherlockianSyndromes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SherlockianSyndromes/gifts).



The postcard was fairly innocuous, just a picture of a kitten sitting in a teacup. One corner was bent, the postmark smeared. It had come in with a pile of mail to the Tower after being sorted, vetted, and double-checked to make sure there wasn’t anything toxic hidden on or in the paper. 

“Steve? You okay?” Clint was looking at him with concern, but Steve could only shake his head.

The writing was unfamiliar, but the words…

_We had oranges for a month after I pinched that crate._

“It’s Bucky,” Steve said, his throat so tight he could barely get the words out. After all that time, those months on the road with Sam looking and never finding, and now here he was. One sentence on the back of a postcard, a memory from when they were kids.

Clint put down his own little pile of mail, mostly archery magazines. “Can you tell where it came from?”

Steve shook his head. It wouldn’t have mattered. Even if the name of the city had been emblazoned on the front of the card, there was no doubt in his mind that Bucky was already long gone from there.

He re-read Bucky’s words ten times, twenty. He remembered Bucky coming home a few days before Christmas with a crate of oranges. A gift, he said, from a kind stranger. Everyone knew better, but they played along anyway. Steve’s mom and Aunt Winnie had made cakes and fruit salad and juice and glazes. They’d all been unusually healthy that winter and Aunt Winnie had insisted it was because of the oranges.

Bucky remembered.

*o*o*o*

The second card was a landscape, mountains at sunset. The postmark was from Austria. Tony had red-flagged the postcards with the mailroom to make sure that they arrived in a timely fashion.

_Captain Spangles, punching Hitler for America._

Bucky had teased Steve mercilessly about it, once he realized his sickly friend and Captain America from the USO shows were one and the same. The rest of the Howling Commandos had joined in, all of them having a good laugh. Not at Steve’s expense, because they’d seen what he could do in a real fight, but at the folly of it all, reducing the brutal, bloody battles to sequins and choreography.

They’d called his show persona Captain Spangles.

“I can have J.A.R.V.I.S. try and track him,” Tony offered. “How hard can it be to find a cyborg in Europe?”

Steve shook his head. “He’ll come when he’s ready.”

“You know where to find me if you change your mind, Grandpa.”

“Thanks, Tony.”

“Aww, don’t go getting all sincere on me. You’re ruining the vibe.” Tony gave him a chuck on the shoulder that turned into a one-armed hug. “Shit. Now you’ve got me doing it.”

*o*o*o*

The Golden Gate Bridge rising up out of the fog. Steve stared at the picture a long time before he turned it over to read Bucky’s message. Could it be counted as evidence that Bucky was stateside? Or was that just wishful thinking?

_I always let you finish the egg creams._

“What is an egg cream?” Thor asked.

“It’s like…fizzy chocolate milk, I guess,” Steve replied. “Bucky and I used to get them at Fleckman’s Pharmacy. They had a soda fountain there. We’d scrape together twenty cents and get one to share. Bucky always let me have the last taste of it.”

“I wish to try this creamy egg drink.”

Steve and Thor took over the communal kitchen and started experimenting with different types of milk and different types of chocolate syrup until they got something that almost tasted like the real deal. Thor was a little confused that there was neither cream nor eggs in the making of it.

“How did it get such a false name?”

Steve shrugged. “I honestly don’t know.”

“I like this drink. We should make more.”

Steve wished Bucky would come back. He’d make him all the egg creams he could handle.

*o*o*o*

“Another postcard from your secret admirer,” Nat said coyly, holding it out to Steve.

This one was a Canadian Mountie in full red serge, sitting atop a horse. Steve chose to take it as a sign Bucky was still in North America at least. He turned the card over, read what was scrawled there, and kind of collapsed on the couch when his legs gave out.

_I hated you for not coming for me._

In his mind’s eye he saw Bucky falling from the train, that look of surprise and dismay on his face as he vanished into the fog. Steve hated himself, too. He thought of Bucky, scared and alone and in so much pain, waiting for his friend, for Captain-fucking-America, to bust down the door and save him.

Instead he’d assumed the worst and crashed himself into the ice because he wasn’t strong enough to face a world without Bucky in it.

“You don’t know what would’ve happened,” Nat said, holding Steve’s hand. “You might never have found him even if you were looking.”

“I would have,” Steve said, his voice thick with emotion. “I should have.”

He’d have gone to hell and back to find Bucky if he’d known the fall hadn’t killed him. Burned Hydra to the ground in its infancy. Kept Bucky from having everything ripped away from him, even his own mind.

“He said hated. Not hate. I don’t think he blames you.”

“I blame me.”

*o*o*o*

There was a much longer time between postcards. Steve was almost certain he wasn’t getting another one, certain that Bucky had remembered that Steve was to blame for everything that had happened after the train.

But another postcard came eventually, this one another animal card, chimpanzees riding bikes. The postmark was smeared and smudged, but it might have said Chicago. Steve was almost afraid to turn it over. Afraid it would say goodbye and that would be the last he ever heard from Bucky.

“You want me to read it?” Sam offered.

“No. Thanks.” Steve had to be strong enough this time. Maybe strong enough to let Bucky go.

_We slept together when it was cold._

He let out a surprised sound that was somewhere between a choked-off laugh and a sob. He hadn’t been expecting that, had gotten himself all worked up for something terrible.

“Kinky,” Sam said, reading over his shoulder.

“It wasn’t like that.” Steve had wished it was, though. So many times. “We didn’t have great heat at our place, which was part of the reason I was always sick. On the really bad nights, Bucky would come over and sleep in my bed with me. Body heat.”

But it hadn’t been just then. Whenever Steve was really sick, or the wind blew through the cracks in the walls, or one of them had been pummeled in a fight, they’d shared a bed. Companionship, comfort…nothing more. Steve had dreamed of it, but back then…

“That’s not a body heat expression on your face right now,” Sam observed.

“It couldn’t have been more, not back then.” 

“This isn’t the 40’s anymore, Steve.”

Steve just shrugged. Without Bucky it was a moot point.

*o*o*o*

Steve walked into the common room, sketch book in hand, and almost walked right past the couch without stopping because he was distracted. They’d gotten a lead on another old Hydra facility and Tony was doing some research before they took off in the Quinjet, and Steve just needed a minute to himself to do some sketches and clear his mind.

“Got your mail,” Bucky said.

The sketchbook fell out of Steve’s hands, and all he could do was stare. James Buchanan Barnes was sitting right there in the middle of Avengers Tower, his hair too long and his face too pale. He was wearing a ratty green jacket and blue jeans, and Steve thought no-one had ever looked so good.

“Buck?”

“Take it.” Bucky held out a postcard, his flesh-and-blood hand shaking just a little.

Steve took it and held it so delicately it might have been made of spun glass instead of paper. A quick glance showed the Statue of Liberty on the front.

“Bucky, I –”

“Read it.”

His own hand shaking from nerves, Steve turned the card over.

_I always loved you. I never forgot that._

The words grew blurry as Steve’s eyes filled with tears. He didn’t deserve that. Any of it. If only he’d been a better friend, a better person.

“I’m sorry I let you down,” Steve rasped. 

“That’s my line,” Bucky said. He pushed himself off the couch. “I didn’t come here to make you upset.”

“Why did you come?”

Steve hated that he sounded so ungrateful, so suspicious. Because it couldn’t be that easy. Bucky couldn’t just stroll inside the Tower like he hadn’t been snatched out of Steve’s life for the last seventy-odd years. That’s now how things worked out for him.

“I don’t remember everything. I don’t…I don’t remember if you loved me back.”

Strong. Bucky had always been so strong, and no amount of brainwashing could ever change that. In comparison, Steve felt like he just might shake himself to pieces.

“Always have,” Steve said, his voice catching. “Always will.”

Bucky nodded. “Okay. Good.” 

He didn’t make a move toward Steve, and maybe he wasn’t ready for that yet. Wasn’t ready to be touched, even by an old friend. Steve didn’t want to scare him away, not now.

“I hear you make a pretty good egg cream,” Bucky said hesitantly.

Steve laughed and brushed the tears off his face. “Been practicing. You want to try it?”

“Sure.”

Bucky followed him into the kitchen. And he stayed. He stayed through meeting the rest of the Avengers – except for Thor, who’d so kindly let him in the Tower in the first place – and he stayed through Steve’s apologies and Tony’s careful tinkering with the metal arm and countless egg creams.

He stayed for the first touch, the first kiss, the first time he let Steve get him naked. He stayed until the others started poking good-natured fun at the sex-sated glow constantly on Steve’s face. And then he presented Steve with another postcard.

_I think we should get our own place._

**Author's Note:**

>  **AN:** Titled from the song [Sealed With A Kiss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9755RnDqMFQ), by Brian Hyland. For SherlockianSyndromes, who loves a five times fic and deserves all the happy endings.


End file.
